Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone—even the rich—miserable. Maybe there’s a way out.

Some thoughts...

Hardworking outsiders no longer enjoy genuine opportunity. According to one study, only one out of every 100 children born into the poorest fifth of households, and fewer than one out of every 50 children born into the middle fifth, will join the top 5 percent. Absolute economic mobility is also declining—the odds that a middle-class child will outearn his parents have fallen by more than half since mid-century—and the drop is greater among the middle class than among the poor. Meritocracy frames this exclusion as a failure to measure up, adding a moral insult to economic injury.

Do people who believe in "personal responsibility" (typically code for "you're-on-your-own"ism really want a society where only a small percentage can succeed, and the rest flame out or live (or die) in poverty?

The problem isn't meritocracy per se; it's a combination of:

most of what is called "meritocratic" actually isn't

there are multiple dimensions of merit, and most "meritocracy" only looks at a few of them

the bar keeps being raised on what level of merit is adequate in order to live reasonably well (basically, society moving the goalposts)

Also relevant:

We are accustomed to thinking that reducing inequality requires burdening the rich. But because meritocratic inequality does not in fact serve anyone well, escaping meritocracy’s trap would benefit virtually everyone.

My comment from a different post of the same article: "Wish they had brain dumps back when I took the SAT (circa 1989). I’d have probably aced it Yeah, you might consider that cheating to some degree, but SATs are BS anyway because they keep people who don’t test well out of the better universities."

Life is not a competition. Something that I've come to believe in recent times despite the abundance of evidence to the contrary. Perhaps it would be better put that life should not be a competition.

Essentially, he says, Britain is being run by children in adult bodies for whom politics is little more than a fascinating game.

I've observed pretty much the same thing with US "conservative" politicians: governing well (or even governing at all, really) isn't the point for them; the point is scoring points with their peers.

...and this is exactly why "conservative" US lawmakers don't see any problem with continually making things worse for 99% of their constituents:

Because of the advantages they enjoy, they will likely be unafraid of a "no deal" departure from the EU, because they almost certainly will not have to pay the price for it. The members of this clique know that they will get away scot-free. They always have.

@Woozle Hypertwin From my years (decades) of watching politics in 'Murica the pattern is essentially set in stone. The idiot public elects a Repug majority, who then f*ck all economic, domestic and foreign policy beyond belief. Then they come out of their coma like state and elect Dems, who have to then spend the entirety of their time in office un-f'cking things, while the Repugs obstruct it in every way imaginable. This take to long, and the public, getting restive, decides once again to re-elect the fascist party. Then we do it all over again, constantly arriving at the zero point, we began with. So nothing effective ever gets done and the oligarchs just continue to march on, while every one else festers and broods.

@Woozle Hypertwin - I tend to agree. Yet, Corporate Democrats are nearly as bad. They're so far right that they are really just Republicans in disguise. That's why we need money (read corporations) out of politics. In fact, I'd take it a step further and call for the complete separation of business and state. In other words, no more government contractors. You either work directly for the government or you don't.

@Doug Senko - My hope is that either Bernie or Elizabeth change that. Preferably the former as I think he has the connection and fortitude to get things done. Also, like he says, "Not me. Us." A real revolution starts from the bottom. It must be "we the people" to become the government we want. We can't just participate one day and expect everything to be fine.